2021 Embodied Social Justice Summit Schedule

DAY 2: Thursday, January 28th, 2021

Atira Tan

3:30am PST (Los Angeles) / 6:30am EST (New York) / 11:30am GMT (London) / 12:30pm CET (Paris) / 10:30pm AEDT (Sydney)

The repercussions of sexual trauma manifest differently for each person. After a boundary violation such as sexual trauma, individuals can experience a range of emotions and reactions which may be confusing and painful. When working with marginalized populations from different cross-cultural contexts, race, and religion, the process of recovery can be multi-layered, nuanced, and challenging.

In this conference, Atira Tan (Ph.D. candidate, M.A, SEP, 500E-RYT), founder of Art to Healing, an Australian charity that supports the trauma resolution of child sex slaves in Asia, with her 17 years of experience mapping the recovery with sex trafficked survivors, will share the efficacy and importance of the body's wisdom, and our somatic instinctual intelligence, as a new way of healing sexual abuse through the psycho-physiology of the body-mind, beyond traditional talk therapy.

In 2019, Atira was part of co-delivering the first-ever Somatic Experiencing one-year Program, alongside Lotus Circle International (USA), for the recovery of child sex slavery and violence in collaboration with the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute (SETI) in Nepal with over 10 different anti-trafficking organizations. Atira will share vital tools and the phases of recovery to empower the self in the wake of sexual assault, violence, and trauma, through Trauma-Informed Yoga and Somatic Experiencing. In addition, she will also touch on how yoga philosophy and somatic practices can support activists working in social justice and change in self-care and the journey towards Spiritual Awakening.

In this session, you will learn:

• Explore the different stages of sexual abuse recovery from a Somatic Experiencing lens.

• Learn how Trauma-Informed Yoga can be vital in survivors reconnecting to a felt sense of safety in the body.

• Understand the concept of Seva, and how it can be applied in an embodied approach for our self-care as activists.

Karine Bell

5am PST (Los Angeles) / 8am EST (New York) / 1pm GMT (London) / 2pm CET (Paris) / 12am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

Dr. Scott Lyons

7am PST (Los Angeles) / 10am EST (New York) / 3pm GMT (London) / 4pm CET (Paris) / 2am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

Our Hosts

9am PST (Los Angeles) / 12pm EST (New York) / 5pm GMT (London) / 6pm CET (Paris) / 4am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

Dr. Rae Johnson

11am PST (Los Angeles) / 2pm EST (New York) / 7pm GMT (London) / 8pm CET (Paris) / 6am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

Embodied Microaggressions in Clinical Practice and Everyday Life

In this class we will explore the traumatic imprint of sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, and other forms of oppression, with a particular focus on how to recognize the impact of micro-aggressions – one of the most subtle yet damaging forms of systemic oppression. More specifically, we will discuss how these “everyday slights, indignities, and put downs” are often conveyed unconsciously through our nonverbal communication, making identifying and responding to them more challenging. Tools and strategies for working with this significant but often overlooked form of oppression will be offered, including practical suggestions for supporting clients, colleagues, and ourselves in naming, hearing, resisting, and resolving them.

In this session, you will learn:

• Recognize microaggressions and how they are conveyed nonverbally

• Understand the somatic indicators of trauma response following a microaggression

• Identify strategies for working with microaggressions

Michelle C. Johnson & Kerri Kelly

1pm PST (Los Angeles) / 4pm EST (New York) / 9pm GMT (London) / 10pm CET (Paris) / 8am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

Centering relationships is one of the most important strategies in dismantling racism and systems of oppression. Join Michelle Johnson, and Kerri Kelly two social change activists, for a workshop exploring how to work across lines of difference and center relationships, even when it gets messy and complicated. Moving towards equity and collective wellbeing demands that we develop a shared understanding of how racism works so that we can locate ourselves in right role and relationship and work across lines of difference to dismantle white supremacy and create the conditions where everyone can thrive. As a community, we can't afford to evade our responsibility for creating a just world by believing that our personal transformation is disconnected from collective liberation. We offer this workshop in the spirit of sharing collective space to wade through what arises when we speak truth from our social location or embodied racial identities.

In this session, we will:

• Develop a shared understanding of how the culture of white supremacy works

• Explore one's right role and relationship in creating equity

• Build relational skills and capacity to work across lines of difference, reduce harm and build community resilience

Angel Acosta

3pm PST (Los Angeles) / 6pm EST (New York) / 11pm GMT (London) / 12am Friday CET (Paris) / 10am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

By combining contemplative practices with the exploration of a digital timeline, participants will learn how to re-imagine how we can both process our past and develop a more compassionate society. Inspired by the 400 Years of Inequality Project and its powerful timeline, this experience integrates practices at the intersection of mindfulness and social justice education to commemorate the arrival of enslaved Africans to U.S. in 1619. Participants will learn how to use the 400 Years of Inequality timeline as a contemplative tool for deepening conversations about structural inequality, historical literacy, community resiliency and social justice. Through interactive dialogue, mindful listening and contemplative practices, participants will become capacious in their abilities to bear witness the trauma and resilience that emanates from the timeline.

In this session, we will learn:

• The use of a digital timeline for exploring structural inequality

• The integration of contemplative practices to sit with our nation's past

• The power of process our collective within an intentional holding space

Ananya Chatterjea

5pm PST (Los Angeles) / 8pm EST (New York) / 1am Friday GMT (London) / 2am Friday CET (Paris) / 12pm Friday AEDT (Sydney)

This class will lead participants through a practice, partly structured and partly improvisational, that develops multi-pronged sensory and kinesthetic awareness and builds to embodying intentional joy. The session will be divided into three sections.

First, participants will be guided through a brief warm-up of major joints and activation of the body’s energetic centers. This will be followed by creative exercises that focus on integrating the nervous system and strengthening hand-eye coordination.

In the second section, participants will be led in a yogic warrior practice that examines the complementary, but different, alignment of limbs that create solidity in placement.

The final section of this class—a meditation on joy—builds on the preceding careful balancing of principles of extension and integration. This last section also invites all participants into their own creative practice, improvising with sound, vibration, gesture, and movement, to identify a bodily methodology to arrive at a state of joyfulness.

This class works with dance and movement, but requires no specific training in these forms. It can be practiced across a range of abilities, as every sequence can be interpreted to suit the practitioner, standing upright or seated in a wheelchair. Practitioners will be encouraged to work bare feet, as able.

DAY 4: Saturday, January 30th, 2021

Kai Cheng Thom

5am PST (Los Angeles) / 8am EST (New York) / 1pm GMT (London) / 2pm CET (Paris) / 12am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

What does it mean to be an extremist for love? What is the intersection of Transformative Justice and the somatics movement? Join author, somatic healer, and warrior poet Kai Cheng Thom for this dynamic exploration of loving and healing justice through the lens of trauma awareness and embodiment. This session is for activists, healers, community builders and educators who are wondering how to get "unstuck" from the seemingly cycles of conflict, punishment, and the replication of oppressive dynamics within justice work. Together, we will look to both ancient lineages of embodiment and contemporary somatic theory in order to weave the beginnings of a freedom movement that unwinds new ways of being with ourselves and others.

In this session, we will learn:

• The foundational precepts of Transformative Justice, prison abolition, and healing justice, and their intersections with embodiment theory and practice

• Somatic inquiries that can be used to expand one's embodied understanding of loving justice and what it means to practice unconditional love alongside political revolution

• Practical frameworks for addressing dynamics of conflict, punishment, and revenge in community organizing, movement building, and education

Camille Barton

7am PST (Los Angeles) / 10am EST (New York) / 3pm GMT (London) / 4pm CET (Paris) / 2am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

In this moment, embodiment is trending and people are becoming aware of the ways our bodies are impacted by multiple systems of power and oppression. However most activism in the western context does not utilize a trauma informed understanding of the body, let alone implement somatic strategies that help to bridge across differences. This session will outline why a trauma informed approach is strategically useful for activists and change makers working in a variety of fields. It will highlight some of the current activist practices that lead to disconnection and offer some practical tools that can facilitate connection and curiosity across different lived experiences. Camille will share some of their insights from the last five years of using a trauma informed methodology for anti racism work via the Collective Liberation Project, as well as running Embodied Social Change sessions.

In this session, we’ll learn:

• Why a trauma informed approach is useful for activism.

• How and why some activist practices lead to disconnection.

• Some tools to use that foster connection and curiosity across differences.

Our Hosts

9am PST (Los Angeles) / 12pm EST (New York) / 5pm GMT (London) / 6pm CET (Paris) / 4am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

Monica Hunken

11am PST (Los Angeles) / 2pm EST (New York) / 7pm GMT (London) / 8pm CET (Paris) / 6am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

When systems and government fail us, direct action is the tool of the people to reclaim our power and transform the dominant narrative. In this workshop, we will explore how art, storytelling and the infinite imagination have been fundamental in sculpting some of the most memorable and effective direct actions throughout history and current times. Activism can be a home for ritual, culture, playfulness, song, embedded within our organizing strategy to reimagine sites of injustice and points of intervention. The bank lobby can be a dance hall, the gas pipeline construction site; a theater, the corporate fountain; a synchronized swimming pool. We can utilize the cultural and creative mediums already alive and vibrant in our communities in our fight against oppressive forces. We will also speak about collective liberation, keeping each other safe in protest scenarios, understanding our rights and our expansive capacity for creating social change.

Dr. Kesha Fikes

1pm PST (Los Angeles) / 4pm EST (New York) / 9pm GMT (London) / 10pm CET (Paris) / 8am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

This presentation – experiential and existential – addresses embodied ways of transparently engaging the persistence of racialization in the wake of desired social changes that are yet to come. If race operates in practice as a sanctioned relational field that psychically and materially forecloses the transcendence of hierarchy, we reproduce such hierarchy – again and again – when we’re misattuned to the racialized binds and historic dependencies that supersede our encounters with each other. To this end, addressed is the importance of continuous, relational tracking of hierarchy in interaction, in the process of its unfolding, to steadily create horizontal relational possibilities, over time. We thus explore an embodied cognitive practice that accountably holds, in real time, the edge between our unresolved pasts and a desired transcendent present. And, we consider the idea of ‘extimacy’ as an embodied, relational resource that can navigate this edge.

In this session, we will learn:

• How race operates relationally

• Embodied critical thought and relational cognition

• Historic repair in the relational field

Dr. Amber Elizabeth Gray

3pm PST (Los Angeles) / 6pm EST (New York) / 11pm GMT (London) / 12am Thursday CET (Paris) / 10am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

Psychotherapy as a behavioral medicine has long promoted the power of the therapist as healer for the client. All psychotherapies, including somatic psychotherapies, have been historically rooted in euro-centric, northern hemisphere, dominant culture, and white supremacist perspective. Notions like safety, self-agency, and therapeutic relationship derive from a limited and limiting worldview. In this presentation, a human rights framework for somatic and dance/movement therapy, co-developed with client survivors of war and torture, will scaffold a deeper dive into how interoception in Dance/Movement Therapy promotes micro-empowerments towards reciprocal alliance for survivors of relational, social, collective and ancestral trauma. Breath, body and movement-based practices and processes from the presenters Polyvagal-informed Soma-Movement and Dance Therapies will offer participants embodied explorations of this theoretical framework in the laboratory of their own bodies. All practices support refined interoception as a pathway to empowerment and truth speaking in clients’ restorative processes , in both individual and collective contexts, and as practice to cultivate therapist/facilitator presence.

In this session, students will:

• Be introduced to a human rights framework for somatic psychology and dance/movement therapy

• Learn core components of Polyvagal-informed Dance/Movement Therapy

• Experience practices to inspire and refine interoception in themselves and their clients for individual and collective contexts

Dr. Betsy Perluss

5pm PST (Los Angeles) / 8pm EST (New York) / 1am Friday GMT (London) / 2am Friday CET (Paris) / 12pm Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

Feminist scholar and activist, bell hooks reminds us, "When we love the Earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully." Indeed, bell hooks words serve as a reminder because no matter how much we forget the essential truth of our bond with nature, it remains deeply lodged in our unconscious, waiting to be re-membered. Body and Nature are inseparable; they are breath wrapped in matter, a mystical marriage of spirit and earth. And it is within this union that dreams come to life. Remembering our bond with the living Earth is the antidote to the predominate culture's state of hyper-rationality, where the reality of embodied psyche in nature is suppressed, lost, and forgotten. As Earth suffers traumas of environmental destruction, so our bodies - especially those of color - are objectified and commodified. The spirit within us is dismissed and land and body are reduced to real estate. But to love ourselves and to love the Earth is a revolutionary and radical act of liberation. In this presentation, we will share stories of our relationship with Earth, reigniting our love for self and others, mediated through dreams of the unconscious. If you wish, please come prepared to share a brief story of your embodied experiences of nature, whether in dreams, waking life, or both.

In this session, you will learn:

• The practice of eco-active imagination and dreamwork as a revolutionary act of embodied environmental justice.

• The importance of nature connection for mirroring and affirming our inherent worth as individuals and communities, and the reciprocity this entails.

• Specific practices for fostering the human/nature bond, and how to critically recognize habits and attitudes that harm this bond in ourselves and others.

 Sessions Available Anytime

Susan Raffo

Part of the work of social justice and somatics is also being able to sit within the truth of our impact on others, and to discern the difference between impact that is about connection and healing versus impact that is about disconnection and harm. This is about the impact of the present moment and it is also about historical and generational harm. What does it mean to stand within your dignity, to feel the sacredness of your own life, while also standing without apology or defense within the truth of how your people, your lineage, has caused harm that continues shaping the lives of real and sacred people today? This is only a 90 minute session, which means I will share some frame and story, invite you to move through a somatic practice with reflection, and then come back to more collective reflection. Please be prepared to do some writing reflection as part of this workshop, ideally with paper and pen if that form is accessible to you.

In this session, we’ll learn:

• Content/learning on historical/generational trauma

• Somatic practices of discernment and listening for response to impact

• Personal reflection time on how this content shows up in your life
  

Niralli D’Costa

In this session we will explore what is showing up in the collective body and what is being asked of us in terms of collective healing. We will look at the ways that the pandemic of racial injustice is magnified by the coinciding disasters of Covid-19, climate change, and police brutality, and we will work experientially with the breath. We will consider a path to healing and liberation via recognition of our interdependence and developing our capacity to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Participants will have the opportunity to:

• Explore the pandemic of racial injustice as it is magnified by the coinciding disasters of Covid-19, climate change, and police brutality

• Practice breathing through discomfort

• Re-conceptualize healing in light of justice